Regarding Chat QoS Issues

We are dedicated everyday to making sure that you have the very best experience on Twitch that we can possibly deliver.

The Twitch community has grown beyond even our wildest dreams (and those are some pretty wild dreams). Since we launched in June of 2011, the community has grown hundreds of percent, and we’re now flirting with 25 Million unique viewers per month. Thank you sincerely to each and every one of you 25 million people.

Now, with that growth comes some growing pains. Chat, for example, is one of the Twitch community’s favorite features. It’s also one of the features that is taxed heavily when very large numbers of people chat at the same time.

Many of you have let us know over the past week about issues you’ve perceived where our chat system is concerned. We want you to know that we are well aware of these issues, and that we are working overtime to fix them.

The good news? We’ve learned a lot from the massive audiences that have gathered on our top broadcasts of late, and an update to our hardware and software is coming that will result in a vastly superior experience for Twitch chatters.

Changes we’re making to ensure a better chat experience:

We’re releasing a patch to our chat servers in the very near future that will make large, active chat rooms less taxing on our infrastructure.

We’re making changes to our internal API faster, thereby delivering a more immediate and fluid chat.

We’re adding more servers to keep up with demand and scaling them to meet future demand.

All of this will take time, but rest assured that we are working diligently on the issue. Thanks to everyone who gave us feedback, and thank you for your patience. We appreciate it.

For those wanting greater control over who can join your chat room, we’ve rolled out email verification to be enabled...

http://twitter.com/BackwardsNinja Hassan

Thank you very much, Matt! I’m glad you guys decided to write a very detailed post on this.

TwitchTVMatt

Pleasure!

http://www.1up-island.com/Yokijirou Tony Lawson

I love you all

60FPS streaming Gameplay if I so choose to stream!? HECK YEAH.

http://jackperry.me/ Jack Perry

This is great to hear, Matt. But as with most things, I’m going to wait until these changes roll out to pass judgment. Will you guys be announcing when these changes go live?

http://twitter.com/FuzzyOtterBalls Justin Wong

One fix is already live. We’ve seen some significant improvements in that area already.

Hardware stuff like procuring servers takes a little longer.

http://twitter.com/Terproerg Jeffery allen

you guys ever going to have canadian servers to connect to?

Paul

Can you please be a little more specific when you say “very near future” regarding the patch? Same goes for an ETA on updating your API and adding more servers.

That’s a bit of vague response and seems to fall in line with the type of responses we have been getting regarding issues for a while now.

Doesn’t have to be exact but at least a rough ETA so we don’t feel like we keep getting the runaround.

http://twitter.com/FuzzyOtterBalls Justin Wong

One of the stability fixes is already live. I don’t have a timeframe for purchasing additional servers.

http://twitter.com/Rubysea Alex Hamrick

Are we able to connect to IRC again?

Grifforzer W

connect by using the command “/server tmi6.justin.tv 6667 -your password-“

http://www.facebook.com/Shuank Shuank Manuel Serruya

Congratz for such an amazing growth guys, you’ve been handling it very well.

I’d love to have a nice SDK to interact with from mobile platforms, looking forward for a nice open platform to communicate with.

http://twitter.com/ShavedLycan13 Brian Harryman Jr

Are there any plans to bring back the Chat intro option for streamers?

http://twitter.com/RNAaron Aaron Foss

That’s great to hear. Still doesn’t address what is actually my #1 issue with the chat interface though – I desperately wish you would get rid of all of the annoying colors that are an eyesore / near-impossible to read (bright green, turbo bright blue, turbo white, etc.). This is basic interface / design stuff, and there’s really no excuse for having such horrid colors as an option.

Naba

Well… Why would LoL and other 15k+ need to have a chat function? They’re unable to chat due to the sheer volume of mesages being sent at the same time, and the problems don’t usually happen unless a big tournament is taking place.. Just disable it (Or seriously nerf it) for those channels and it should at least help the situation.

http://twitter.com/Devotii Devotii

cool Turbo money being spent well

http://www.facebook.com/caleb.jones.14 Caleb Jones

As someone in a work enviroment that uses cloud computing and multi-datacenter and needs scalability, I don’t see how you guys pull this off with such a small team. Absolutely amazing, good work.

TwitchTVMatt

Thanks Caleb for the kind words!

Frustrated Streamer

Is there a reason why tournaments with 150k+ ppl even NEED a chat? Is
there a reason why in spite of months of all the google investment
money, the ad revenue money, etc, you are just now explaining that you
will eventually be rolling out these fixes and new servers, after at
least four months of this chat lag being an ongoing issue? It worries me
that you claim you’ve only had complaints for the past week – or
perhaps it is that you’ve only been listening for the past week –
because I know for a fact these issues have been reported by many since
last year. Why downplay it?

I am also concerned with no ETA (not
even a vague one) given. This suggests only that you wish to quell the
masses, not actually offer any practical information. You even disabled
your forums where people could talk openly about issues they have. Why
the censorship?

Other websites that offer the same services as
Twitch are on their way. You may not have given an ETA, but I believe
these new site launch dates will be all the ETA you will receive.

Good luck. I’d like to see Twitch stick around…but you’ve doddled long enough. It’s time to hustle.

JT Gleason

Sorry you are frustrated. Lets talk about some facts.

Firstly we have never received any investment from Google. You must be thinking of a competitor of ours.

Secondly, we are working hard on all these issues. If we had a firm date, we would give them to you. Several of these changes are already in production. More will happen over the next few weeks.

Thirdly, this is a startup. We don’t have 500 people to put on any task. We hustle harder than all of our competitors on this front and have for a long time. Just because you don’t see immediate results, don’t assume we are slacking off at our jobs. It’s somewhat disrespectful.

Hope this helps!

Frustrated Streamer

Fair enough.

I still don’t see a response to the issue of tourny chats not needing a chat at all, or admitting you knew the chat lag was an issue months ago instead of just a week ago, or how the forums were taken down. Any response to any of these aspects?

TwitchTVMatt

Addressing your questions one at a time:

The manner in which large tournaments manage the chat experience on Twitch is entirely up to them.

We’ve been working on scaling chat since launch in June of 2011. Scaling it to match our rapid growth has been a challenge. The volume of customer support requests and social media chatter over the last week increased, hence the language in the post. You should begin noticing major improvements in chat immediately.

The old forums were replaced with help.twitch.tv which is a much more curated source of information with a public question-and-answer component. We encourage people to gather there, here on the blog, on Reddit where there is a vibrant community, Team Liquid, etc. Also – the old forums are archived and no longer active, but the information is still available.

Frustrated Streamer

Actually, that was perfect. Thanks for providing insight. That really did help.

TotalCereal

Awesome! Thanks for keeping us informed. Chat has almost always been unstable, so it’s nice to know that you guys are actively working on fixing and improving it

Truth

Problems we have “perceived”? Instead of admitting to real problems and saying that the response has been unacceptable, you instead find an excuse and point fingers. Empathize with the users, then accept responsibility for the lacking quality of service, then explain how you’re going to fix it. This has gone on for many months. Take some responsibility.

Truth

Writing it as “issues you’ve perceived in chat” makes it sound like you see no issues there at all. Rather, that the entire lot are being unreasonable whiny babies about it. And that is simply not the case.

TwitchTVMatt

Sry that certainly was not intended. There are indeed issues with chat and we are working on them. I suppose I should have said “issues you’ve experienced in chat…”

Truth

Thank you. With PR posts such as this, wording can be quite particular- especially on the internet where things can be interpreted with a different “voice” than what is intended. I understand my post may get many dislikes from “Twitch faithful,” but that’s just how I read the original post. Thanks for clarifying.

http://www.facebook.com/jay.laudick Jay Laudick

Can we please get the lag issue fixed first. I know I am not the only one that recently started to experience extreme lag, even on the lowest of settings.

TwitchTVMatt

We hear you. Video QoS is an issue that deservers its own discussion. It’s not a single issue that can be fixed with a software patch or an added server. It’s actually a collection of thousands of issues, some of which are Twitch-related, some of which are not (venue internet and bandwidth, end-user network conditions, and etc.).

Believe me when there is lag during a major tournament, for example, we have a talented team that pulls all-nighters to ensure that Twitch is meeting its commitments.

More on this soon…

Guest

Good job, Twitch. I am so impressed how you worked very hard!

DeafGamingTV

Good job, Twitch. I am so impressive how you worked very hard!

TwitchTVMatt

Thank you sir!

http://www.facebook.com/eduard.francu Eduard Francu

i am sorry to say, but youtube offers one of the most reliable streams and features that twitch can only dream of right now

Sean Pike

I hope one day twitch will have an Australian proxy so we can stream better quality there, the Singapore servers just don’t work properly anymore.

http://twitter.com/kur1 Christopher Bral

Speaking of chat quality, any possibility of adding an options that makes mods “stealthy” by removing their special icon (either to the full channel, or non-mod viewers)?

Sometimes my channel is just a string of mod icons. It’d be lovely to remove them, maybe instead replacing it with a special name coloring or chat color (anything less obtrusive than a massive icon).

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